Periodic Reporting for period 1 - BioDT (Biodiversity Digital Twin for Advanced Modelling, Simulation and Prediction Capabilities)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2022-06-01 do 2023-05-31
Biodiversity is important because it ensures food security, provides sources for medicine, offers economic benefits, holds cultural and aesthetic value, enhances ecosystem resilience under global change, enables species evolution and adaptation, and carries ethical significance from the standpoint of preserving life. Biodiversity data, such as data on species distributions, are used to monitor ecosystem health, guide conservation efforts and inform policy-making. Biodiversity is recognised in several European policy initiatives and flagship programmes, including the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030, the EU Green Deal, UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and Destination Earth.
Biodiversity science combines fields including ecology, biology, genetics, economics and geography, which often have a relatively short history of computational research. While traditionally the processing of biodiversity data has not required substantial computing resources, research in the field is becoming increasingly data-intensive, requiring the use of supercomputers. This is connected to a need for improved modelling approaches that can handle large data masses and produce reliable predictions of biodiversity shifts in response to pressures including changes in climate and land use. Biodiversity data are also diverse in terms of their quality, coverage and openness. Successfully considering biodiversity as part of decision-making, therefore, requires access to increasingly harmonised, open and quality-controlled data.
Originally designed for industrial purposes such as product design, digital twins (DT) represent a highly promising solution to address the needs of modern biodiversity research. A digital twin can be defined as a virtual, interactive replica of a real-world entity or process, comprised of data, a model (the digital representation of a real-world process), and ways to connect the data and model. For a DT to be sufficiently representative, it must be synchronised with its real-world counterpart at regular intervals.
The Horizon Europe Biodiversity Digital Twin (BioDT) project seeks to push the limits of biodiversity science by developing DT prototypes that mimic and predict different aspects of biodiversity dynamics, with the goal of improving our understanding of how biodiversity responds to diverse environmental pressures. As detailed and realistic simulations require large amounts of computing resources, the DTs developed in the project are deployed on the EuroHPC LUMI supercomputer, the top-ranking high-performance computing facility in Europe.
BioDT addresses the following key objectives:
1. Building and deploying prototype DTs corresponding to several topics (e.g. pollinator survival, citizen science for biodiversity monitoring, biodiversity dynamics in grassland habitats)
2. Integrating the DTs with biodiversity research infrastructures that play a key role in facilitating access to biodiversity data
3. Ensuring the interoperability of BioDT with Destination Earth, a flagship programme of the European Commission for constructing a digital twin of the Earth
Through its work on demonstrating the technological feasibility of DTs in ecological research and facilitating access to biodiversity data, BioDT is anticipated to pave the way for system changes in ecology, including establishing new types of interactive tools for monitoring ecosystem health, with benefits for a broad range of end-users including citizens, researchers, policymakers and industry.
Biodiversity science combines fields including ecology, biology, genetics, economics and geography, which often have a relatively short history of computational research. While traditionally the processing of biodiversity data has not required substantial computing resources, research in the field is becoming increasingly data-intensive, requiring the use of supercomputers. This is connected to a need for improved modelling approaches that can handle large data masses and produce reliable predictions of biodiversity shifts in response to pressures including changes in climate and land use. Biodiversity data are also diverse in terms of their quality, coverage and openness. Successfully considering biodiversity as part of decision-making, therefore, requires access to increasingly harmonised, open and quality-controlled data.
Originally designed for industrial purposes such as product design, digital twins (DT) represent a highly promising solution to address the needs of modern biodiversity research. A digital twin can be defined as a virtual, interactive replica of a real-world entity or process, comprised of data, a model (the digital representation of a real-world process), and ways to connect the data and model. For a DT to be sufficiently representative, it must be synchronised with its real-world counterpart at regular intervals.
The Horizon Europe Biodiversity Digital Twin (BioDT) project seeks to push the limits of biodiversity science by developing DT prototypes that mimic and predict different aspects of biodiversity dynamics, with the goal of improving our understanding of how biodiversity responds to diverse environmental pressures. As detailed and realistic simulations require large amounts of computing resources, the DTs developed in the project are deployed on the EuroHPC LUMI supercomputer, the top-ranking high-performance computing facility in Europe.
BioDT addresses the following key objectives:
1. Building and deploying prototype DTs corresponding to several topics (e.g. pollinator survival, citizen science for biodiversity monitoring, biodiversity dynamics in grassland habitats)
2. Integrating the DTs with biodiversity research infrastructures that play a key role in facilitating access to biodiversity data
3. Ensuring the interoperability of BioDT with Destination Earth, a flagship programme of the European Commission for constructing a digital twin of the Earth
Through its work on demonstrating the technological feasibility of DTs in ecological research and facilitating access to biodiversity data, BioDT is anticipated to pave the way for system changes in ecology, including establishing new types of interactive tools for monitoring ecosystem health, with benefits for a broad range of end-users including citizens, researchers, policymakers and industry.
During its first year of operation, the BioDT project identified key requirements for building and running biodiversity DTs and started the development of a technical platform for their use. The platform is intended as an easy-to-access environment where end-users can interact with DTs, including running them on the LUMI supercomputer. It is designed to serve as a generic, open platform that can also be used to deploy DTs developed outside the project.
BioDT has established several prototype DT descriptions that will be developed as the project progresses. Examples of the topics being addressed include responses of grassland environments to environmental change, pollinator survival, forest biodiversity under different forest management scenarios, the cultural value of biodiversity, and identifying populations of wild crop relatives that are climate-resilient and safe for human consumption.
The digital twins designed in BioDT are made of several components and include, for example, features for moving data and feeding them to modelling tools. The first set of DT components has been tested on LUMI and the project has established methods for collecting data to be used by the DTs. For example, over 1 million bird song recordings have been collected via a national-scale citizen science campaign launched in Finland. The recordings can be used to identify bird species, making it possible to model their distribution under different conditions, including different climate scenarios. By combining different modelling methods in new ways and by enabling easier model-user interaction, BioDT is expected to produce predictions of biodiversity shifts in time and space that have not been previously possible to obtain.
Each DT is expected to rely, as far as possible, on open-access components and data. Plans have been established to reach this goal, informing the development activities pursued in BioDT.
The BioDT project has taken significant steps in identifying groups of end-users for each DT and has set up a community space on the LifeWatch ERIC Community Platform. Discussions are underway on demonstrating how specific DTs could be linked with Destination Earth and key services for promoting open data access in Europe, including the European Open Science Cloud.
BioDT has established several prototype DT descriptions that will be developed as the project progresses. Examples of the topics being addressed include responses of grassland environments to environmental change, pollinator survival, forest biodiversity under different forest management scenarios, the cultural value of biodiversity, and identifying populations of wild crop relatives that are climate-resilient and safe for human consumption.
The digital twins designed in BioDT are made of several components and include, for example, features for moving data and feeding them to modelling tools. The first set of DT components has been tested on LUMI and the project has established methods for collecting data to be used by the DTs. For example, over 1 million bird song recordings have been collected via a national-scale citizen science campaign launched in Finland. The recordings can be used to identify bird species, making it possible to model their distribution under different conditions, including different climate scenarios. By combining different modelling methods in new ways and by enabling easier model-user interaction, BioDT is expected to produce predictions of biodiversity shifts in time and space that have not been previously possible to obtain.
Each DT is expected to rely, as far as possible, on open-access components and data. Plans have been established to reach this goal, informing the development activities pursued in BioDT.
The BioDT project has taken significant steps in identifying groups of end-users for each DT and has set up a community space on the LifeWatch ERIC Community Platform. Discussions are underway on demonstrating how specific DTs could be linked with Destination Earth and key services for promoting open data access in Europe, including the European Open Science Cloud.
Given that BioDT is the first project to investigate the feasibility of DTs for biodiversity modelling, the project relies on an iterative approach in which prototype DTs are further refined based on project requirements and end-user feedback. This feedback, to be gathered and accounted for during the second and third years of the project, will contribute toward the successful uptake of the DTs by ensuring their alignment with end-user needs and expectations.
The BioDT project has identified several key needs in advancing FAIR principles (findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability) in relation to biodiversity data. Through pioneering work on FAIR-compliant DTs, the project seeks to facilitate further work in this field through connecting DTs with data supplied through European biodiversity research infrastructures.
The BioDT project has identified several key needs in advancing FAIR principles (findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability) in relation to biodiversity data. Through pioneering work on FAIR-compliant DTs, the project seeks to facilitate further work in this field through connecting DTs with data supplied through European biodiversity research infrastructures.